In an effort to increase its revenue, Twitter has launched a new platform for advertising. Twitter has formed a Twitter account called @earlybird, where prospective deals and discounts will be offered by the advertisers in the form of tweets. Anyone who follows this account will be informed about the ongoing discounts and deals. This account or advertising initiative by Twitter was launched last week and has already seen 48,000 followers.
Amongst the first deals to have opened up on @earlybird was Walt Disney’s promotion of its movie “The sorcerer’s Apprentice” where the scheme of “buy one ticket and get another absolutely free” was undergoing. According to Twitter, they are interested in featuring similar deals faring in fields of arts, entertainment, cinema, fashion, technology, beauty and travel. Twitter’s strategy is to take these promotions to the pages of the “influencer” that is those big shots who influence the decision-making process amongst the fan flowing and followers. This would have a dramatic effect on the number of followers of @earlybird.
To add to the advertising tryst, Twitter is all set to form alliances with discount services some of which are the likes of Groupon and Gilt Groupe. @earlybird has come after Twitter’s trial at advertising in the form of ‘promoted tweets’, a concept that was run on a trial basis in April. Within this concept, advertisers and promoters were allowed to purchase tweets that would contain the keywords specific to the promotion. These tweets containing keywords would then show up every time any user would search Twitter for those or similar keywords. Some of the advertisers and promoters to have used this method of promoting were Starbucks, Coca Cola and Best Buy. Another idea of advertising employed by Twitter was in the form of “Promoted Trends”. In this, brands and products would show up every time a specific topic was searched, for example World Cup. Walt Disney made use of this type of promotion on Twitter for advertising for its film “Toy Story 3”.
Twitter officials agree that there is still a lot of ground to cover when it comes to promoters using their platform for promoting the services. Right now, Twitter is dealing with just a few ‘tens’ of advertisers. However, the target is to achieve at least a few ‘thousands’ of them before they decide to relax. According to Twitter, @earlybird will also allow the advertisers to decide the terms of the buy, availability, amount for the product and other conditions for the deals. Thus, @earlybird makes for a lucrative platform for the advertisers as well. The officials are also of the belief that promotion tweets like with @earlybird are expected to be successful as these invite the users or followers into conversation, hence further expanding the follower base by making these tweets popular.
While the success of @earlybird is yet to be tested and achieved, advertisers such as Starbucks and Coca Cola are already touting about all the success that their ads on Twitter have brought to them. However, the details of the success or the statistics are yet to be brought to the forefront.
